She stood speechless at the doors and stared in at all of them; enormous Abraxans, Granians, and Aethonens. All of which stared down at her and Draco through barred stalls. They stomped their hooves and tossed their heads, nickering as Hermione ventured forward.
She reached up, and a dainty Granian fluttered its smokey wings and shoved its nose through the bars, nuzzling against Hermione's palm.
“I didn't know you had horses,” she said as she stroked its muzzle and scratched at its ears. “I thought I'd explored most of the estate near the manor. I don't know how I didn't notice the stables.”
Draco was oddly quiet. She turned to look at him. He had an unreadable expression on his face as he studied her.
He tilted his head and seemed to be hesitating for several seconds. “You did know about them.” His eyes dropped. “You used to come here daily during the winter. You stopped at the end of February.”
Hermione stared at Draco, her fingers rubbing against the Granian's neck. The horse nearly knocked her over as it nosed at her robes.
She turned back and scratched at the swirl on its forehead while trying to wrap her mind around the revelation.
Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She swallowed and cleared her throat several times.
“Oh,” she finally managed to say in a light voice after standing and smoothing the Granian's mane so it would lie flat. Her nose and eyes were burning from the dust and the sickly sweet scent of hay.
After a minute she nodded. “That makes sense.”
She nodded again and cleared her throat. “I think I lost a few memories — I think during my first seizure.” She kept fussing over the horse without looking back towards Draco. “It's — it's so interesting how memory works. There are probably a lot of things I don't even know I can't remember... It—” she had trouble thinking of what to say. “It must be very odd to watch.”
“I don't think it was your seizure,” Draco said from behind her. “It's something the Dark Lord does. A legilimency technique, I suppose you could say. He tears apart memories. He's talked about the method in the past. Little pieces of things; he takes them and shreds them apart. He — enjoys feeling the mental anguish the victims experience when they lose the memories.”
There was a pause.
“Coming here used to make you happy, so he took it from you.”
Draco summoned several apples from a bin nearby and sliced off a piece, handing it to Hermione. Hermione laid it on the flat of her palm and held it up. The Granian's muzzle brushed and tickled against her skin as it huffed and ate.
“Were there other things?” she asked. “Other things that I don't remember forgetting?”
“You had a memory of your father. He told you to fold a thousand paper cranes to get a wish. That was all I knew of.”
Hermione stood, feeling cold as she absorbed it. “I wondered — why I did that.”
Several more horses pushed their heads through the bars of their stalls and tossed them up and down until Hermione moved from horse to horse, petting their noses while she bribed them into quietude with apple slices.
She could feel Draco watching her, and it made her stomach knot as she tried to calculate why he'd brought her there.
“So — why do I need to know about the horses?” she asked as she scratched the ears of an Abraxan whose head was the size of an elephant's.
Draco handed her another apple slice before he answered.
“With sufficient resources, portkeys and apparition leave traceable signatures. Apparition and brooms don't go far enough, fast enough. Granians fly faster than any other magical creature. You'll be flying horseback from the manor to Denmark. There's a safehouse there with an international portkey; it will take you to Ginny.”
Hermione nodded again, withdrawing from the horses and walking past Draco without a word. Of course, it was just another step towards her departure. It seemed like everything he did was just an additional phase in his goodbye process.
They were heading back to the manor when Draco stiffened and froze, his expression becoming a mixture of disbelief and rage. Hermione stared up at him nervously.
Lucius—
“Astoria has just apparated into the foyer,” he said.
A feeling of cold washed over Hermione. Compared to Lucius, Astoria was a minor inconvenience, but the combination of both of them was horribly ill-timed.
Draco scoffed and looked heavenward. “Why is it that nothing ever goes wrong by halves?”
He stood for several seconds with his eyes unfocused. When they cleared, he snorted angrily. “Yet another person I'll have to deal with.”
His left hand strayed towards his wand holster as he stalked towards the manor, the gravel crunching loudly under his shoes.
Hermione followed him, and a sinking sensation came over her as it occurred to her that Draco had likely been expecting to have to kill Lucius ever since his father's return, and now Astoria was on that list as well.